For this weekly wisdom I wanted to discuss the tempo used to perform core training and why we move slowly in True40 Workouts.

First, let’s talk about why we don’t move fast during this section:

• Moving fast maximizes large dominant muscle groups, overpowering and neglecting your smaller stabilizing muscles. While these larger muscle groups grow bigger, your Stabilizing muscles as a result will weaken over time. This lack of structural balance makes you prone to injury.
• Adding speed triggers your muscles to fire up and react quickly, which helps initiate the movement. However, your body thereafter relies on momentum to move and disregards proper muscle development. 
• Fast-tempo core training is ego-driven:  it focuses on the number of reps you can perform, the number of calories you burn, the amount of weight you can lift, etc. unless you are a competitive powerlifter or professional athlete, these things shouldn’t matter to you!

The benefits of our slow-tempo core training in True40:

• Slowing it down focuses on the length and integrity of the movement. Controlled slow repetitions allow you to strengthen harder-to-reach stabilizing muscles that will improve your muscle growth, mobility, and structural balance of the body.
• You will not be able to use heavier weights (when applicable) or in our classes, “take the challenge” necessarily when you don’t utilize momentum to move. However, at a slower tempo, there is a longer “time under tension” which is necessary for developing muscles properly.
• A slower tempo is safer, more efficient, and accessible for everybody, which is truly our mission! Because of the time under tension, your body should still create enough heat to see a calorie burn.

We all can probably picture a client for when we get to Core they just go crazy, no matter how many times we recue the class to slow down! Hopefully, this gives you some good talking points and understanding for when we get to this point in class. 

What’s great about True40 (as if you didn’t already know 🙂 ) is that we have a fantastic multifaceted workout that balances fast-paced and slow-paced movements that should enhance any results our clients are looking for.